


Boys Don't Cry (Except When They Do)

by J (j_writes)



Category: Sports Night
Genre: 5 Things, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five times Dan Rydell doesn't cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boys Don't Cry (Except When They Do)

**Author's Note:**

> written for Phoebesmum.

Dan hung up the phone and stared at the wall. It was blank, white, accusing.

"You coming?" asked his roommate from the doorway, and the obvious answer was _no, I'm not coming, my brother just died, you jackass_.

"Yeah," he said instead. "Yeah, I'm coming."

He spent his first college party sitting in a corner, ignoring the girls who occasionally ended up in his lap, drinking bottle after bottle and trying to forget.

Shockingly enough, it didn't work.

When he woke in the morning he stumbled into the shower and let the water scald his skin, and he didn't cry.  
______________

"Sports," his father said, as if Dan was going to be a prostitute or something. "That's no job for a man."

"So it's a job for a woman?" Dan asked.

"Don't be a smartass."

"There are fags in sports," his dad told him later, at the door, as if he was imparting some kind of ancient wisdom.

 _Well then, I'll fit right in_ , Dan didn't say.

 _There are 'fags' on your street, and at your bar, and in your family_ , he didn't say either.

"I'll be on Friday, at six," he said instead, and knew that his father wouldn't watch.  
______________

"I love you," Casey said the night before his wedding. The bachelor party had been a predictable disaster that ended with the two of them alone in Casey's hotel room, very drunk, sprawled across the bed in bathrobes. "You know that, right?"

Dan knew that.

Casey had his hands inside Dan's robe and his tongue in Dan's mouth by the time Dan gathered up the strength to leave.

"Trust me, you'll thank me for this," he said, placing a hand on Casey's chest.

"Thank you," Casey said the next morning, just before Dan ran to the bathroom to throw up.  
_______________

There was an empty hallway in the hospital where Dan punched the cinderblocks until his hands bled.

"You ok?" Casey asked when Dan got back to the waiting room, and he nodded because there was no way to tell Casey that no, he wasn't.

"You?" he asked, and Casey nodded back, eyes red.

They'd never been any good at lying to each other.

He fell asleep with his head on Casey's shoulder, and when he woke there was no news about Isaac, but Dan's knuckles had been bandaged, and Casey was asleep with his fingers still resting against Dan's wrist.  
______________

"So. That's it, then," Casey says to the emptiness of their office.

It's the third time they've thought the show was going under, and the only time it actually has. So now it was one last night on the air, and goodbye to Sports Night.

He looks out the window as Casey's arms come around him from behind, and feels tears prickle at his eyes, unwelcome, unexpected.

Casey's voice is loud in the stillness. "There'll be…"

"Something else," Dan finishes, and yeah, maybe there will. Or maybe not, this time.

And maybe this time, he might be okay with that.


End file.
